


Birth of a Soldier

by ConfusedUnit



Series: The Other Side [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 09:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12679104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConfusedUnit/pseuds/ConfusedUnit
Summary: Jack remembers falling.





	Birth of a Soldier

Jack remembers falling.

He doesn’t quite remember what had been going on before; he remembers being afraid, he remembers Gabriel being with him, and he remembers pain.

He wakes up with blood dripping down his face, concrete trying to make a home in his spine. His eyepiece sparks and stutters, and he curses as it goes out. He never told anyone, other than Ana, that his eyes had started having issues. ‘SEP side effects’, he assumed. The eyepiece on his communicator had been a temporary solution.

He slumps against the wreckage when he thinks of Ana. He misses her. He and Gabriel both do.

That thought gets his attention. He hears, and feels, heat and destruction. He coughs, heated air burning his lungs. “Gabriel?” He starts to panic, squirming even as he feels something break his skin. “Gabriel!”

He hears nothing other than crackling fire in response.

“Gabriel!” He shouts, feeling his panic rise as he keeps calling for him. He claws at the rubble around him, crying out as he burns his hands. He keeps trying to escape anyway. “Gabriel!”

He doesn’t know how long it takes him to make a hole to crawl through, but once he’s free of the rubble that pinned him he coughs and chokes, spitting blood to the side. He wheezes. “Gabriel...”

He hears a groan, and he tenses. “Gabriel?”

“...Jack...” Gabriel’s voice is barely there.

Jack scrambles, trying to make his way through the deathtrap that covers the two of them. “Gabriel! Please- just hold on, I’ll be right there!” He coughs and sputters as the smoke scalds his lungs.

“Jack...” His pain is obvious in his tone.

“Hold on- Please-” He burns his hands more, dragging a useless leg behind him. “Please...”

“Jack...” He coughs, shakily reaching out a hand through the rubble.

Jack struggles to carve an opening, but once he does he crawls inside. He looks over Gabriel, feeling tears fall down his face as he sees the wounds.

Gabriel’s legs are badly mangled, his other arm looks almost shattered, he’s missing so much skin-

Jack wheezes, pulling Gabriel into his arms, lying with him. “Gabe...”

“Jack...” His breath is a rough gasp. “I...I’m sorry...”

“Hey, shh...None of that. It’s...it’s okay.” He pets at Gabriel’s hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Jack...” He wetly coughs.

“Please...Please hold on. All we have to do is wait. They’ll come for us.”

“Will they?”

He’s quiet.

“I...I can’t, Jack. It hurts. It...It hurts...”

“I know. I’ve got you.” He holds him close. “I’m sorry...”

“No. Don’t...” He coughs, blood splattering on Jack’s burnt coat. “...Remember...plan...”

He takes off his coat, wrapping Gabriel in it, before he holds him again. He presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. “I love you, Gabriel.”

Gabriel smiles, though his eyes still show pain. “Love you, Jack.” He closes his eyes, and his rough breathing starts to fade.

Jack closes his eyes, tears still falling, listening to Gabriel’s heart and breathing. It hurts him, to know there’s nothing he can do. He quietly whispers to Gabriel, telling how much he loves him, how much he means to him. He whispers even as he feels Gabriel go lax, as he feels the breathing against his neck stop, as the pulse under his fingertips fades away.

It almost breaks him. He feels his husband die in his arms, and the only thing that keeps him in the present is the weight of him on him. He needs to keep fighting. He wants nothing more than to stay here with Gabriel until he joins him, but only the two of them know the truth, and if he dies here it dies with both of them.

He holds Gabriel for a while, unwilling to let him go, until he feels the pain in his leg again. He gently sets Gabriel to the side, trying to make him comfortable. He leaves the coat around him, pressing one last kiss to his forehead. “I’m going to make them pay, Gabriel. They’ll-” His voice cracks, and he chokes on the smoke again. “...They’ll burn for what they did...” He takes one last look at Gabriel, before he leaves, crawling and fighting his way through the wreckage.

He’s sure he’s hallucinating; he sees smoke wafting off of Gabriel as he goes.

-

Jack doesn’t react to what’s happened, not yet. He struggles his way to an old safehouse, one that Gabriel had insisted on as a precaution. He spends as little time as possible in there, getting one or two things before he leaves and heads for his own safehouse.

That had always been the plan. If one of them lost the other, the remainder would stop at the dual-safehouse, then go to his own. They never wanted to have to use the plan.

And now here he is, sitting in his safehouse as he stitches up his own face, listening to the news on TV. He feels sick, and it’s not from the blood loss.

Gabriel is dead.

It’s a fact that keeps hitting him in waves. His husband, his closest friend, is dead. He died in his arms.

He wishes he could join him.

“Well...” He mumbles to himself, washing the blood off his hands. “Sorry Reinhardt. Sorry, Torbjörn. Looks like you two are the last two left.” He moves back into the living room, sitting at the coffee table. He sets to work repairing his eyepiece.

-

When he hears the reports, the news segments that start trying to implicate and blame Gabriel, he snaps. He works himself to an almost frenzy, furious and outraged and trying to think of what to do. But someone else acts before he’s able to.

His eyes widen, as he hears a recording of his and Gabriel’s last conversation before the building dropped play through the TV’s speakers. He falls to the floor, having to focus on his breathing. Parts of the conversation are corrupted, the parts where they talked about their plan, but the rest is there up until Athena was disconnected from the building.

He curls over himself, hoping that that’s enough.

When there’s a movement to disband Overwatch two weeks later, he takes comfort in the fact that Gabriel won’t be a villain.

-

He doesn’t break down crying.

Tears fall from his eyes, but he forces himself not to break down. He’s sure that if he does, he’ll never come back.

He goes to Gabriel’s funeral. It’s a large affair, dedicated to the both of them, and it’s easy for him to blend in. He sees Jesse, Genji, off to the side. Reinhardt and Torbjörn speak. Fareeha is there.

He doesn’t remember much else of that day. It took all his willpower, and his entire stash of whiskey back at the safehouse, not to break.

-

The first time he wakes from a dream of Gabriel, he screams. He screams, and screams, and screams, clawing at his head as if that will make him stop. Tears fall, and he screams until his voice is hoarse, until he screams all his energy away and slumps against the bed. His breathing is rough, gasping, but he does not sob.

He doesn’t sleep well after that.

-

He doesn’t let himself grieve. That would make this, make everything, too real. He pushes on as if he’s on a mission, as if they’re just separated temporarily. He supposes that’s not untrue.

He listens to the news as he sews a cover, a disguise, using materials Gabriel had bought for him long ago.

‘76’, he stitches onto the back of the jacket. The number is important to him; he had been the 76th recruit for the SEP, he remembers seeing the number on his medical paperwork instead of his name. Out of the first hundred, the first ‘batch’, only fifteen had survived.

If Jack Morrison was dead, then all that was left was an experiment, a government project that on paper never existed. He wasn’t a husband anymore. Wasn’t a leader. Wasn’t a public figure, a spokeman, a peacekeeper. He was just a soldier. That was what he was made for.

So a Soldier he will be.


End file.
